Social Network Deconstructed

I envisioned this task along with its complement task, Document a Construction.



In 2005, the American Journal of Sociology published a study in which a team of researchers attemped to 'map' the sexual geography of a U.S. High School. The 832 students who completed the survey were asked to report their sexual behavior over the last 18 months, and the researchers compiled this information into statistical and visual pictures of the network.

Here's the Columbia News Service article on the study, with pictures, if you're interested.

Utilizing some of the categories from the research study and adding more of my own, I decided to take an inventory of as many kinds of relationships I've had in my life, up to the present. Relationship categories ranged from the practical/physical 'friends-lovers-partners' variety to more abtract categories like: imaginary friends; authors/fictional characters/historical figures; unrealized relationships and desires; or people I felt had influenced my way of thinking/being in the world.

After a categorical and numerical inventory, I diagrammed these relationships into a sort of map or network. The map contains elements of time, duration, location, intensity, etc., but I doubt it will be readable in a practical or actionable way to anyone but me (if that, even!). But that was the interesting and exciting part of deconstructing something - you're left with a bunch of pieces and potential for another interpretation - another construction.